TheLostSkeleton

Hi guys - first post here. Registered here... couple months ago? Never posted until now.

Skimmed most of the thread.

To those of you who are saying this may not be worth it and that it may not even work - of course it'll work. 40% would generally mean that most of the core gameplay is probably there (how NiGHTS controls, etc.) and probably early versions of most if not all the levels. Game design basically works like this:

Stage 1: Design document and conceptual. This is where gameplay, drawings of characters and levels are all planned out ahead of time. Almost everything is planned at this stage - bosses, their attack patterns, enemies, and how the game will look and play, down to the finest details. A good example of detailed game concept art can be found at Chris Senn's Sonic X-treme website.

Stage 2: Engine development. A test level (or test levels) are created in order to help develop the engine based on the concepts presented in the design document. This is called an Alpha. There's basically no game at this point, just an engine.

Stage 3: Once the engine is to a point where most of the features have been written, content production begins. Textures, enemies, models, levels... all begin production in large volume. Most places don't just work on one level at a time, either - depending on the size of the development team, three or more levels can be in production at any given time. This is most likely especially true on a short, somewhat simple game like NiGHTS.

Stage 4: Content creation winds down and by now, most of the concepts from Stage 1 have been transfered in to the game. Everything is tweaked and polished and obsessively tested to make sure it's fun and works properly. I've heard it's this process that usually makes up the bulk of a game's development time and that Stages 1-3 are actually the shortest and easiest parts of making a game. This stage in game development is called a Beta. Hence the widely-used term "Beta Testing". Usually, when you first see a game in a magazine or on a website, you see it at the tail-end of Alpha or the very beginning of Beta.

Stage 5: With the game properly tested and all of the biggest, nastiest bugs corrected, the game is finalized and "goes gold". Packaging is finalized, the manual is finalized, the discs enter mass production and are shipped to stores.

In most terms, "40%" doesn't sound like a lot - but in videogame terms it means that a considerable portion of the game is probably playable (just not finished) - we'll potentially end up getting a tantalizing (but buggy!) peek at lost levels, enemies, and who knows what else that was cut from the game before it hit retail shelves.